Gargantua and Pantagruel eBook

Welcome, in good faith, my dear master, welcome!
It did me good to hear you talk, the Lord be praised
for all! I do not remember to have seen you
before now, since the last time that you acted at Montpellier
with our ancient friends, Anthony Saporra, Guy Bourguyer,
Balthasar Noyer, Tolet, John Quentin, Francis Robinet,
John Perdrier, and Francis Rabelais, the moral comedy
of him who had espoused and married a dumb wife.
I was there, quoth Epistemon. The good honest
man her husband was very earnestly urgent to have
the fillet of her tongue untied, and would needs have
her speak by any means. At his desire some pains
were taken on her, and partly by the industry of the
physician, other part by the expertness of the surgeon,
the encyliglotte which she had under her tongue being
cut, she spoke and spoke again; yea, within a few
hours she spoke so loud, so much, so fiercely, and
so long, that her poor husband returned to the same
physician for a recipe to make her hold her peace.
There are, quoth the physician, many proper remedies
in our art to make dumb women speak, but there are
none that ever I could learn therein to make them
silent. The only cure which I have found out
is their husband’s deafness. The wretch
became within few weeks thereafter, by virtue of some
drugs, charms, or enchantments which the physician
had prescribed unto him, so deaf that he could not
have heard the thundering of nineteen hundred cannons
at a salvo. His wife perceiving that indeed
he was as deaf as a door-nail, and that her scolding
was but in vain, sith that he heard her not, she grew
stark mad.

Some time after the doctor asked for his fee of the
husband, who answered that truly he was deaf, and
so was not able to understand what the tenour of his
demand might be. Whereupon the leech bedusted
him with a little, I know not what, sort of powder,
which rendered him a fool immediately, so great was
the stultificating virtue of that strange kind of pulverized
dose. Then did this fool of a husband and his
mad wife join together, and, falling on the doctor
and the surgeon, did so scratch, bethwack, and bang
them that they were left half dead upon the place,
so furious were the blows which they received.
I never in my lifetime laughed so much as at the
acting of that buffoonery.

Let us come to where we left off, quoth Panurge.
Your words, being translated from the clapper-dudgeons
to plain English, do signify that it is not very inexpedient
that I marry, and that I should not care for being
a cuckold. You have there hit the nail on the
head. I believe, master doctor, that on the
day of my marriage you will be so much taken up with
your patients, or otherwise so seriously employed,
that we shall not enjoy your company. Sir, I
will heartily excuse your absence.